Final Project Climate Change
Bowen
11/28/2020
Summary Information
Significance
Our project aims to research the effect that climate change has had on the US. Climate change is something important to address and understand, so we want to do some data analysis to determine the effect it already has on different parts of the world and whether it has already begun to impact people’s lives. We used 3 different data sets for our research.
Introduction to Data Sets/Summary Information
US Extreme Weather Index
One of the questions that we were interested in was the number of extreme weather days that the US had over the last 50 years. To answer this, we got the U.S. Climate Extremes Index (CEI) , which has a list of the percent of extreme weather days in the United States, as well as the number of actual percent of days that are extreme for the year.
There are some important takeaways looking at the data. First, the data set traces 110 years, from 1910 to 2019. In these observations, the year with the most days that were above the normal temperatures was 2012, with 86.6% of days above normal. The year with the highest amount of days below the normal temperatures was 1912. In total, for every 110 of the observations, the average amount of days that were extreme (low or high) was 19.8510909%.
Monthly Climate Conditions
Another question that our group was interested in was How do the average temperatures of each state in the United States today compare to the mean temperatures of past 50 years or more. To get the a data set for this, we went to the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily (GHCN-D) for the Monthly Climate Conditions.
The data set above has 7 columns for data points within the contiguous United States but we are only using the first four columns. The first and second columns are a ID for each location, followed by the Location Name. The next column is the date of each occurrence, and the last column is the change in temperature (in Fahrenheit).
Temperature and Precipitation Trends
The last question that our group was interested in was the trend of average precipitation and snowfall of each state in the United States over the last 50 years or more so. This could be found when we compared the average amount of precipitation per year to each other. To do this, we got the Temperature and Precipitation Trends.
This data set had three columns: the first one has the date of the observation, the next is average precipitation for the US that year, and the last column is the anomaly, or the teperature from the average.
Summary Table
The following table is the average change in temperature for each state:
| State | Temperature Change |
|---|---|
| Alabama | 5.255833 |
| Arizona | 6.552619 |
| Arkansas | 3.971667 |
| California | 5.079524 |
| Colorado | 5.826000 |
| Connecticut | 6.598889 |
| Delaware | 6.416667 |
| Florida | 5.498333 |
| Georgia | 5.195370 |
| Idaho | 4.874000 |
| Illinois | 4.742778 |
| Indiana | 4.976111 |
| Iowa | 5.077222 |
| Kansas | 4.323333 |
| Kentucky | 4.834167 |
| Louisiana | 5.187407 |
| Maine | 5.768333 |
| Maryland | 6.001250 |
| Massachusetts | 6.500556 |
| Michigan | 5.241000 |
| Minnesota | 6.266296 |
| Mississippi | 5.263833 |
| Missouri | 4.252778 |
| Montana | 5.415000 |
| Nebraska | 4.921250 |
| Nevada | 6.305000 |
| New Hampshire | 6.042500 |
| New Jersey | 6.531111 |
| New Mexico | 6.715625 |
| New York | 6.187167 |
| North Carolina | 4.935208 |
| North Dakota | 6.723518 |
| Ohio | 5.046500 |
| Oklahoma | 4.034815 |
| Oregon | 4.499259 |
| Pennsylvania | 5.709000 |
| Rhode Island | 6.700000 |
| South Carolina | 4.672857 |
| South Dakota | 5.714074 |
| Tennessee | 4.957083 |
| Texas | 5.667167 |
| Utah | 6.209286 |
| Vermont | 6.270556 |
| Virginia | 5.182778 |
| Washington | 4.373000 |
| West Virginia | 4.858611 |
| Wisconsin | 5.441482 |
| Wyoming | 5.171333 |
This table has all the 48 states in the contiguous US, and their average change in temperature from the last 50 years. We can see that the state with the least change was Arkansas with a 3.9716667 increase in temperature. On the other hand, North Dakota had a 6.7235185, increase, making it the state with the biggest increase.
Charts
The following graph visualizes the Climate Extreme Index:
This graph is intended to show the US Climate Extreme Index from 1920 - 2019, and the relationship between the approximation of the percentage of extreme weather days with the year. What this graph shows is that the amount of extreme weather days was decreasing from 1910 to around 1963, then they began to grow up to where the current years have the highest average percentage of extreme days. This difference for modern times can probably be accounted for by global warming, and the pollution that the world is getting more and more of.
The following map shows temperature data on the contiguous US:
This is an interactive map that is intended to show the changes in temperature by state. From this, we can see that there is no simple correlation between the state’s location and the change in temperature on the state level. Rather, there are sections of the map that have similar temperature changes. The Southwest has a lot of states with massive temp increases, but right next to it are four states that have some of the least temperature increases.
The following graph shows trends of average temperature:
As seen from the title, each of the recorded dates for the year happened in October. This chart is intended to show the relationship between the years and the average temperature of the US in October. Instead of breaking it down by state, we see the trends when they are grouped as a nation. From this data, the trend is moving upwards, and we can see how average temp is rising. Another interesting observation is how the anomalies also increase in both directions as the years go by. That shows that there is more variance between the years, showing that there are more extreme temperatures, while the average continues to climb.